This is the fantastic true story of William Townsend McCoun’s mansion built in Oyster Bay, Long Island. When Jamie and Frantz Arty bought the empty property, they decided to restore it to its former glory at the height of the pandemic. They made some amazing discoveries about the house’s history along the way.

Trigger Warnings
Slavery

Why Kirsten loves it
Inside this book, you’ll get to see photos inside the home and the Arty family’s life during the restoration process, but I loved how Arty also shares sketches and information about the former owners. I’ve never read a renovation story quite like this one that marries the newly learned house history with the renovation struggles along the way. I was immersed in the story and quickly started hunting down even more information about Jamie Arty and her gorgeous home.

Absolutely incredible! The funding! The history! The total restoration of an abandoned once beautiful mansion! Even just painting 32 rooms! The decorating! The landscaping! Straining the daily life on property with a young family! The expense!! The history!
The property when they began as urban explorers had been abandoned and in an abysmal state so the prospect of dealing with all that needed to be done was absolutely mind boggling. There was also finding out ALL of the history of the building and all of the people involved in its creation and those who once lived there. Think of an onion as they peeled layer after layer of the property's history and surprises both amazingly good and breathtakingly bad. BUT THEY DID IT. Then came putting it all together in photos and prose and getting it out there for all of us to appreciate. Excellent!
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected digital galley from Hyperion Avenue | Andscape Books via NetGalley. Pub Date Jul 15, 2025 ***** review @goodreads @bookbub #photographs @librarythingofficial
#TheChancellorsMansion by Jamie Arty @making_over_a_mansion @hyperionavebooks @netgalley @disneybooks #Renovation #Family #Home #History #Oyster Bay #Long Island#abolitionist #landscaping @NYPL #bookshop_org @the.storygraph #nonfiction

This book really surprised me! I read a lot of home improvement books, as well as any that come onto the television. My wife and I watch the shows together and offer our critiques throughout the show. There's a formula most books/shows follow, inserting the drama and ta-da moments we have come to expect.
And that's why this book surprised me! The author did not follow the formula at all. Sure, there is plenty of dramatic moments, but they don't feel forced or unbelievable. Arty adds so much more to the story than is expected.
Arty and her husband are on the search for a new home to raise their children (and for the in-laws). They come across an almost fairy-tale like dilapidated mansion. The home was abandoned for years, and so full of '"stuff", they couldn't even be sure of how many rooms were in the house. And it also came with an additional, smaller home for the in-laws.
I enjoyed reading Arty's story, she is a very good writer. What I most enjoyed, and was surprised by, was her research into the home's history. She really outdid herself with that! I was fascinated reading about the earlier owners, the presence (or not) of slaves, the old cemetery, and the hidden spots (in the house) to hide slaves who were escaping on the Underground Railroad.
Throughout the book, the author's still manage to live their lives, raise their children, and not lose their sanity. I don't think I could have done it!
This is a well thought out book, excellently written, and has a pleasant "flow" to it. I highly recommend it to people who are interested in old houses, renovations, and history.

The Chancellor’s Mansion by Jamie Arty is several interesting stories in one. The first story is about the Arty family and their need for more living space. Their hunt took them to Oyster Bay in Long Island, New York. A once grand but now dilapidated estate became their project. The house and grounds were overgrown and held secrets of the previous owners, from belongings to terraced gardens, all things the Arty’s had to sift through to even begin the great repairs needed. I enjoy a good renovation story and this was no exception. Good contractors, bad contractors, unforeseen issues like holes in the yard, leaky pipes, and a host of other issues are shared.

The house was built by William Townsend McCoun a NY judge and abolitionist. There were lovely period details, such as crown moldings, curving staircases, large fireplaces and original kitchens found in the house, along with a lot of detritus, left by previous owners. New owners came and went, some adding details, such as porches and drop ceilings, that had to be removed to restore the house’s integrity. The Arty’s were forced to make decisions about what to replace or restore, what colors to paint to make the house theirs.

I was very impressed with the historical details of the house as well as details of the political climate of the times. Arty goes into extensive and well researched information regarding slaves and their owners, detailing a woman named Sophia Brooks, who purchased her freedom and then became
A valued member of the household and family. She was buried in the McCoun family plot, a true testament to her devotion to a family and their devotion to her. The history portions of the book were well thought out and very well written.

The Chancellor’s Mansion is an interesting story on so many levels. It shows the love of family and the love of history, but most of all, what makes a house a home.

With a toddler and brand-new twins, Arty's family was bursting out of their house. She and her husband were desperate for *space*, somewhere their kids could be kids, maybe somewhere big enough to fit Arty's in-laws instead. They weren't really looking for a project—but oh boy did a project find them.

"Every room was strange and unpredictable. And precarious! Among the nine bathrooms we found, one large bath had clearly once been elegant, with a marble fireplace, hand-painted tiles in a shell motif, and 1940s-era wallpaper covered in swooping swallows, kingfishers, and lily pads. Another bathroom, narrow and tight, had a cast-iron clawfoot tub, but also wall-to-wall newspaper covering an enormous hole in the floor. It was like an Indiana Jones movie, some places in that house, where any step you took could make something fall on you, or swing something at you, or drop you into somewhere else." (loc. 576*)

Imagine buying a house without any real way of knowing ahead of time how many bathrooms it had, let alone how many rooms total. (The answer to the latter part of that equation: 32.) I mean, also imagine calling the 2,200-square-foot place next door a "small cottage"—while I have zero doubt that that space felt small when seven people were living there, the house I grew up in was about 1,400 square feet for five people, so I did have to laugh. If 2,200 square feet is a "small cottage", did I grow up in a shack? Or is "small cottage" only relative to 32 rooms?

But I digress. As a house renovation story (one of my favourite memoir subgenres, and yes, I know that's weird), this is charming and also a great vicarious experience. Arty's voice is strong—she worked with a ghostwriter, but this feels genuine—and she takes a balanced perspective on the desire to restore vs. the need to bring things into the modern age.

The real bonus here, though, is that Arty is also interested in the history of the house, and more generally of Black people in the area. One of the reasons she and her husband ended up with this particular house—which they stumbled across on their own—was that more than one realtor tried to limit them to less desirable houses in less desirable neighbourhoods (never mind what they could afford); she talks openly about the experience of navigating real estate while Black and then dives deep into what it would have been like to be Black in that area in the past. I'm ashamed to say that I'd either forgotten or didn't know in the first place how long it took for the "free" states to be actually free; I knew, of course, that the Fugitive Slave Act (among other things) could effectively turn free states into slave states, but not that it took New York and New Jersey about as long as the South to abolish slavery.

All of this is relevant to the book—Arty traces the history of the people who owned the house before her family, and the history of some of the people who worked there, and the slave trade is, ah, very relevant. I love that this house is in new hands, and that Arty and her family can make something new of it—preserve what should be preserved, make note of what no longer needs to be there, memorialize the people who would otherwise be forgotten, and bring new life into the house.

One thing that is missing for me, though: what do you *do* with 32 rooms? How do you even begin to fill that much space? And good golly, how do you even begin to keep it clean? I like dreaming of big houses (I live in a one-bedroom apartment), but when I think of ways to use that space that I would actually *use*, I kind of run out of ideas after "home library" and "home gym". (Maybe "second home library"...) And then I think about the fact that I need to dust my small apartment, and I get overwhelmed even by that. I guess it's just as well that I'm only living vicariously through house-restoration memoirs...

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.